Thursday, February 25, 2016

The Long View ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

'Begin your book, writers are advised, in a way no one can ignore. Start a fire on the page: set a sentence fizzing, and lob it at your reader like a hand grenade.... There is a quieter way: 'This then was the situation.' With a hushed baleful confidence, the writer places a chair for you. You are in Mrs Fleming's dining room, you are complicit...'

There is nothing like a reading rest to restore the zest, and with a month of slow and steady but not prolific reading while travelling I have come home with renewed enthusiasm for my bookshelves and it feels good. I have a little pile of books growing by the day, all of which I feel that buzz of excitement about opening, and I have bought a few too...

Maman, What Are We Called Now by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar, published by Persephone, because I am hearing such good things about it, and maybe a lesser known book by a New Zealand author, In a Fishbone Church by Catherine Chidgey because I downloaded a sample and knew I wanted to read the actual not the virtual book. I can't wait to read Exposure by Helen Dunmore and the new book from Tracy Chevalier At the Edge of the Orchard (Tracy will be writing a guest post here nearer to publication date) Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson, Slade House by David Mitchell, all jostling for my attention.

Treats in store, but meanwhile we were debating the ways and means that a book may or may not hold the attention only last week, and how soon we might throw in the towel, but if there is one sure-fire way to pique my curiosity in any book it is to include an introduction by Hilary Mantel.

And so The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard arrived suitably adorned with the sacred words...

And I only had to read Hilary's opening gambit, quoted above, to know that here was a book I would stay with, because if there was one thing I loved about Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies it was that sense of sitting in the room as an interested observer.

I would like to say I met Elizabeth Jane Howard at an event I spoke at some years ago in celebration of the writer Elizabeth Taylor. Truth is we were in the same room and I don't think she noticed me, but I most certainly noticed her. In a wheelchair, clearly impaired with her breathing, motoring in late having got lost so Philip Hensher had been cleverly 'filling in' but he deftly stepped to one side when Jane (as she was known, thank you Hilary) arrived with a flourish. Every last ounce of her beauty and personality still very much in evidence as she spoke eloquently about her friendship with Elizabeth Taylor.

Of Jane, having outlined the stellar success of the 'Cazalet Chronicles', Hilary says this...

'It would be rewarding if the thousands of readers who enjoyed the series were drawn to the author's earlier work. There was a time when her talent was so unstoppable, that there was no predicting where it might take her. From the beginning she attracted superlatives...from the first she was a craftswoman...'

I was intrigued to discover more for myself and quickly realised that, with its attention to nuances of atmosphere, here was an object lesson in detailing the visual for the reader's imagination, as well as plenty of acerbic observation on the human condition. Every page, and I mean every page, is freighted with tangible atmosphere as the sense of place and the life and loves and foibles of the family are laid bare.

I really can't describe the power of Elizabeth Jane Howard's writing any better than Hilary..

'She feels the chilly breeze in the street and the chilly draught of misgiving in the heart. In the moment feelings are experienced, they are described: they are pinned to the page.'

The Long View is a journey back in time, starting in 1950 as the family gather to celebrate son Julian's engagement to June, each book, whilst subtracting the years, adds reasons and explanations. as it moves back through 1942, 1937 , 1927 and finally to 1926. The Antonia and Conrad Fleming and their three children first met become more knowable people...the philandering, controlling Conrad...

'He simply added, as it were, another storey to the structure of his personality, and invited the lady in question to pout herself temporarily in possession...'

The seemingly subservient Antonia...

'She had been loved and touched and fashioned; dominated, protected and ignored...'

And whilst the reader may pass judgement on Conrad's behaviour, and Antonia's acquiesence, somehow Elizabeth Jane Howard maintains an even hand (it can't have been easy) revealing remarkable insights into both the male and the female psyche. There is a breathtaking moment as Conrad reflects on his own life and the complex dilemmas of reconciling wife and mistress, the jealousy, the infatuation, the obsession, when Hilary Mantel's words in the introduction rang true and clear..

'Conrad Fleming...is a man of unblemished conceit, immaculate selfishness. Young women readers today may view him with incredulity. They should not. He is faithfully recorded. He is the voice of the day before yesterday, and also the voice of ages past...'

Here is the book that keeps on giving because the immediate impulse on reading the final chapter is to read the first one again.

I feel sure many of you will have read The Long View and doubtless the other early works of Elizabeth Jane Howard, and know of what I write. It is me who is very late to this party and now with some wonderful catching up to do. Hilary Mantel goes on to debate exactly why these books may have slipped below the radar and are so seriously underestimated, and her conclusions are riveting...

Books categorized as 'by women, for women,'

Enjoyed but disparaged...

Perfection inviting contempt...

Judgements about Elizabeth Jane Howard's personal life contaminating judgements on her work...

I can't recommend a read of this introduction highly enough, offering as it does confirmation of attitudes and assumptions that still need some shifting.

This edition of The Long View (with Hilary Mantel's twelve page introduction) is published this week by Picador as part of its Classics series, highlighting some of those great voices and and bringing neglected classics back into print. It is a classic in every sense, a keeper on my shelves, and how delighted I am to have discovered it eventually.

Comments

The Long View ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

'Begin your book, writers are advised, in a way no one can ignore. Start a fire on the page: set a sentence fizzing, and lob it at your reader like a hand grenade.... There is a quieter way: 'This then was the situation.' With a hushed baleful confidence, the writer places a chair for you. You are in Mrs Fleming's dining room, you are complicit...'

There is nothing like a reading rest to restore the zest, and with a month of slow and steady but not prolific reading while travelling I have come home with renewed enthusiasm for my bookshelves and it feels good. I have a little pile of books growing by the day, all of which I feel that buzz of excitement about opening, and I have bought a few too...

Maman, What Are We Called Now by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar, published by Persephone, because I am hearing such good things about it, and maybe a lesser known book by a New Zealand author, In a Fishbone Church by Catherine Chidgey because I downloaded a sample and knew I wanted to read the actual not the virtual book. I can't wait to read Exposure by Helen Dunmore and the new book from Tracy Chevalier At the Edge of the Orchard (Tracy will be writing a guest post here nearer to publication date) Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson, Slade House by David Mitchell, all jostling for my attention.

Treats in store, but meanwhile we were debating the ways and means that a book may or may not hold the attention only last week, and how soon we might throw in the towel, but if there is one sure-fire way to pique my curiosity in any book it is to include an introduction by Hilary Mantel.

And so The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard arrived suitably adorned with the sacred words...

And I only had to read Hilary's opening gambit, quoted above, to know that here was a book I would stay with, because if there was one thing I loved about Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies it was that sense of sitting in the room as an interested observer.

I would like to say I met Elizabeth Jane Howard at an event I spoke at some years ago in celebration of the writer Elizabeth Taylor. Truth is we were in the same room and I don't think she noticed me, but I most certainly noticed her. In a wheelchair, clearly impaired with her breathing, motoring in late having got lost so Philip Hensher had been cleverly 'filling in' but he deftly stepped to one side when Jane (as she was known, thank you Hilary) arrived with a flourish. Every last ounce of her beauty and personality still very much in evidence as she spoke eloquently about her friendship with Elizabeth Taylor.

Of Jane, having outlined the stellar success of the 'Cazalet Chronicles', Hilary says this...

'It would be rewarding if the thousands of readers who enjoyed the series were drawn to the author's earlier work. There was a time when her talent was so unstoppable, that there was no predicting where it might take her. From the beginning she attracted superlatives...from the first she was a craftswoman...'

I was intrigued to discover more for myself and quickly realised that, with its attention to nuances of atmosphere, here was an object lesson in detailing the visual for the reader's imagination, as well as plenty of acerbic observation on the human condition. Every page, and I mean every page, is freighted with tangible atmosphere as the sense of place and the life and loves and foibles of the family are laid bare.

I really can't describe the power of Elizabeth Jane Howard's writing any better than Hilary..

'She feels the chilly breeze in the street and the chilly draught of misgiving in the heart. In the moment feelings are experienced, they are described: they are pinned to the page.'

The Long View is a journey back in time, starting in 1950 as the family gather to celebrate son Julian's engagement to June, each book, whilst subtracting the years, adds reasons and explanations. as it moves back through 1942, 1937 , 1927 and finally to 1926. The Antonia and Conrad Fleming and their three children first met become more knowable people...the philandering, controlling Conrad...

'He simply added, as it were, another storey to the structure of his personality, and invited the lady in question to pout herself temporarily in possession...'

The seemingly subservient Antonia...

'She had been loved and touched and fashioned; dominated, protected and ignored...'

And whilst the reader may pass judgement on Conrad's behaviour, and Antonia's acquiesence, somehow Elizabeth Jane Howard maintains an even hand (it can't have been easy) revealing remarkable insights into both the male and the female psyche. There is a breathtaking moment as Conrad reflects on his own life and the complex dilemmas of reconciling wife and mistress, the jealousy, the infatuation, the obsession, when Hilary Mantel's words in the introduction rang true and clear..

'Conrad Fleming...is a man of unblemished conceit, immaculate selfishness. Young women readers today may view him with incredulity. They should not. He is faithfully recorded. He is the voice of the day before yesterday, and also the voice of ages past...'

Here is the book that keeps on giving because the immediate impulse on reading the final chapter is to read the first one again.

I feel sure many of you will have read The Long View and doubtless the other early works of Elizabeth Jane Howard, and know of what I write. It is me who is very late to this party and now with some wonderful catching up to do. Hilary Mantel goes on to debate exactly why these books may have slipped below the radar and are so seriously underestimated, and her conclusions are riveting...

Books categorized as 'by women, for women,'

Enjoyed but disparaged...

Perfection inviting contempt...

Judgements about Elizabeth Jane Howard's personal life contaminating judgements on her work...

I can't recommend a read of this introduction highly enough, offering as it does confirmation of attitudes and assumptions that still need some shifting.

This edition of The Long View (with Hilary Mantel's twelve page introduction) is published this week by Picador as part of its Classics series, highlighting some of those great voices and and bringing neglected classics back into print. It is a classic in every sense, a keeper on my shelves, and how delighted I am to have discovered it eventually.

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

Team Tolstoy BookmarkDon't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

Port Eliot Festival

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